


birds of prey

by illinois_e



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Codependency, Dysfunctional Relationships, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Raven!Neil, The Perfect Court (All For The Game), implied/referenced physical and psychological abuse, mentions of tetsuji moriyama and nathan wesninski, riko is a fucking rich boy and therefore has no reason not to do a fucking therapy, they all take care of each other in this one, which is what everyone needs in these books
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-27 03:49:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16210796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illinois_e/pseuds/illinois_e
Summary: nathaniel hides in the closet whenever his father is mentioned, drinks a bottle of gatorade per day and finds comfort in the walls that protect him as much as they keep him confined to the darkest rooms of his captors' nest.[or the one where nathaniel is a raven, always have been, always will be—even if he is still, somewhere inside, a fox too.]





	birds of prey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [asiren (meliorismo)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meliorismo/gifts).



> neil's mother managed to flee with him but they didn't last more than a few months on the road before nathan found them; so neil (or nathaniel) has been a raven since he was a kid. i guess by now everyone is at least mildly aware of how perfect court works
> 
> this is a gift to my amazing incredible brilliant show stopping friend analu who beta'ed this for me and also gave me strenght to finish it when it was just another abandoned draft in my google docs. there still might be some mistakes because english isnt my native tongue and neither hers
> 
> ps: i know ravens arent birds of prey, but when i found that out i was already used to the title, so i left it there anyway

Jean once said Nathaniel dreamed as if he want to flee the world with the power of his imagination alone. It was not true—Nathaniel preferred the weight of the master’s cane than the sight of the light reflecting on the metal of his father's well polished axe. He longed for it, even, though he never told this to anyone, the lesser of two evils, and took the beatings with his mouth closed and his body unmoving, quiet. They all learned to be quiet; even Kevin, who used to cry for his dead mother, and Riko, who used to scream for his father as if he forgot it was the same man who left him to rot in the perpetual darkness of the Nest.

There was no point in fleeing. The year he spent with his mother on the road taught him that.

It’s wasn’t true, but he didn’t say anything because he knew that Jean, in fact, was the one that dreamed as if that could someway take him back to Marseille, to a time before his parents thought it was acceptable to sold their son to settle an old debt; to pay in blood yet to be spilled. Nathaniel didn't say anything; he smiled with his lips closed, touched the tip of Jean’s nose with his own, laying beside him on the single bed, and closed his eyes for another five minutes before getting up for another day of training.

It was only later, when the four of them were sitting at their usual places at the table and he and Kevin were chatting away about the next games because the silence sometimes had the potential to drive Nathaniel to almost insanity, that he said, suddenly.

“I dreamt I was a fox.”

And there it was, his own treacherous tongue betraying him. It wouldn’t be the first time Nathaniel blurted out some nonsense—after all, they could have their heads bashed against the wall so many times before something in their brains gave away.

“Well,” Jean said, carefully wrapping his lettuce with a knife, because cutting it was bad etiquette and he was a well-mannered man surrounded by starved jackals. “That's surely an upgrade from that time you dreamt you were a bird, I guess.”

Kevin hummed in agreement. “Hey, Nate’s obviously a cat. I mean, he does have an habit of throwing himself on people's laps, and he always bites our hands when we play with his hair too much. Next thing you know, he's going to headbutt us all and say that's just how he shows love.”

Jean choked on his lettuce, and even Riko smiled, a small and secretive thing, and Nathaniel knew he was trying his best to hide the fact that Nathaniel _did_ headbutt him, once, in the arm, when he discovered that that was how cats demonstrate affection for someone. He was only fourteen, but Kevin and Jean were not above overlooking that for the rare opportunity to have some fun at his expense.

“Idiots. I'm not talking about a real fox.” He braced himself for what he was going to say next, for the almost sin that he was about to confess. “I'm talking about the team. Palmetto State Foxes.”

The foxes were their first adversary in this year national championship. It was the first time they managed to get a good spot in the regionals, surprising everyone who knew something about exy. The notion that a team that fought more between themselves than with their opponents could win something, much less a second place in their district’s classifier, was beyond Nathaniel. But the foxes did it.

(he was willing to ignore the fact that the ravens were pretty much the same, but they had him and jean and kevin and riko to keep them on top, no matter how ugly and how bloody their fights could get)

“You’re just nervous for the next game,” Riko said, twirling his fork around a plate full of food he never had any intention of eating. His tone was emotionless, and Nathaniel doubted that it was because he didn’t care, and felt that it was more like he was finally learning from the master. “It's your first match in your first national championship, after all.”

He kept his eyes fixed on Nathaniel’s face. He dreamed as if he wants to flee the world—but Riko wouldn't let him flee for the foxes. Could not. Not any of them.

 _It was just a dream_ , he wanted to say. But Kevin and Jean were still listening. Four is a big number not to have any secrets between them, and Riko had more than anyone else. Nathaniel kept his mouth shut and hoped his eyes could tell enough.

“I've been playing exy since I started to walk. I'm not nervous.” He crossed his hands over his chest as if that could shield him from every word he didn't want to hear. “ _They_ are the ones that should be.”

“Don't worry, Nate.” Jean's knee touched his own under the table. Around them, the rest of the players started getting up and turning back to the court. In the Nest, rest time didn’t even begin properly before it was over. “Not even a miracle could get them to win.”

“You shouldn’t be so full of yourself.” Kevin got up and left before any of them could answer. Riko followed him not a second later—he was the captain, after all, and practice couldn't start without him. Sometimes Nathaniel wondered if bossing everyone around was worthy getting beaten for every single mistake they made, especially the newbies.

Like him.

At the distance, he could hear Riko ask _are you doubting us, Kevin?_ but Jean got his attention back before he could listen to the rest.

They were the only two left at the table. Jean put his hand over Nathaniel smaller — but stronger — one and squeezed. “Are you anxious?”

Not nervous. Anxious.

“A bit.” It felt stupid, saying it out loud, but he knew Jean wouldn't judge him.

“You don't need to be. The moment you walk into that match, everyone will understand why Riko chose you to be number three. The whole country will see.”

“I know,” Nathaniel said. Knowing didn't make him feel better about it. He sighed. “Let's go before Kevin can come here and start complaining.”

“You say that as if Kevin is actually capable of doing something without complaining.” Jean said, but followed suit. There was a very small time window in the Nest after practice started and before you were labeled late, and no one wanted to be late.

“You're right,” Nathaniel said forgetting about the next match and his crazy dream and everything else that was not exy and winning and winning and winning.

Because these are the things that mattered. The thrill of playing, the high of winning—the only things that could keep him alive.

 

* * *

 

Living at the Nest since he was ten years old, Nathaniel fancied to know the way to every single hiding spot in the place with his eyes closed and his hands tied. It didn’t matter that Riko and Kevin had been living there way before him, just as soon as Evermore’s wall were raised. They didn’t need to hide because they knew they couldn’t, that Tetsuji would just wait patiently until they crawled back from whatever hole they found, cane in hand and expression blank. _It’s the worst thing_ , they’d said. _You never know if he’s going to hit you two times or twenty._ But Nathan wasn’t Tetsuji—his anger flowed like waves in the sea. In a storm, it would hurt and maim and break everything is his path. In a sunny day, it would not harm you if you didn’t ask for it. The secret was waiting for it to subside, however long it took.

The Moriyamas had offered him protection in exchange of his game, but Nathaniel refused to trust them for a long time, and mentally he prepared his escape for the day that Nathan would came, storming the walls of the Raven’s Nest to bring him back to Baltimore. To home.

It never happened. It never happened _yet_. Nathaniel never let himself be sure about what his father would or wouldn’t do. You can’t look at a volcano and know when it’s going to be the next eruption.

One of the secret hiding places he found in one of his early explorations was an old deposit for even older things. Torn up jerseys, broken rackets and whatever else they couldn’t find an use for, but hadn’t take to time to throw away. It smelled of rubber and sweat and the characteristic smell of all things old and abandoned, so much that Nathaniel was forced to turn on the ceiling fan if he wanted to stay there for more than five minutes.

It was also directly under the court, and from there it was possible to hear the sound of sneakers squeaking against wooden floor, of the ball flying around plexiglass walls, of the buzzer playing every time someone managed to score. All in all, it was one of Nathaniel’s favorite places to do his homework at midnight, when the only ones crazy enough to be practicing above (besides him) were Kevin and Riko.

 _Junkie_ , he thought, remembering his dream. The foxes’ goalkeeper — Andrew, he remembered; it had sat easily on his tongue — used to call him that every time, but there was no spite in his voice, only resignation. Junkie. Nathaniel found that it didn’t sounded as bad as it should.

He was halfway over the day’s exercise before he heard three quick knocks on the door, Jean’s signature. Nathaniel stretched his arm enough to turn the key and went back to what he was doing. It wasn’t like Jean needed a proper invite to come and sit himself next to him, stretching himself over Nathaniel’s shoulder to see what he was doing.

“Math again?” he asked, defeated. There were few things Jean hated as math, simply because he was unable of understanding the hidden meaning of it. Nathaniel liked numbers because they were fixed, set in stone, predictable—the square root of 912.04 is always going to be 30.2, no matter how you write it. Mathematics couldn’t be undone. And that was why Jean preferred words. They changed with time, with people, with places. No person speaks the same as another. Words shift and turn and spin endlessly. They _change_.

(jean wished his life could change)

Nathaniel hummed and leaned his head on Jean's shoulder. He let the exercise half-finished on his lap and closed his eyes, wishing he could go to sleep there, with Jean close to him and the sounds of practice above them like a lullaby. “Something wrong?”

“Nothing. I just didn't want to be alone.”

Nathaniel smiled against his skin. Jean was undoubtedly — for him — the best of them, and that was a fact that still wondered them all every now and then. Kevin said it was because Jean came after, when he was already fourteen years old, and utterly against his will. Riko argued that the most important factor was that the Moreaus were a small and insignificant rundown family who, on the biggest string of bad luck, ended up biting more than they could chew and making a debt with the high and mighty Moriyamas. Riko and Nathaniel grew up surrounded by blood and murder and Kevin had to get used to it by force, but Jean didn't even think about it before being shipped halfway across the world. Nathaniel didn't believe in either of these things.

For him, Jean had something neither of them could dream of—a faith of some strange kind, hidden deep within, far away from reach. Something that not him nor Riko, born to draw blood, could begin to understand, and neither Kevin could exactly pinpoint.

If he could, he would've taken Jean away from the Nest long ago. If only.

(but without jean holding them down and stitching them back in place, how could they have any hope of surviving like human beings and not simply sharp toothed monsters?)

Kevin kept them confident. Riko kept them safe. Nathaniel kept them together. But it was Jean who kept them sane.

“Do you want me to look for monsters under your bed?”

 _Stupid_ , his mind screamed. _You’re the monster under his bed._

Jean’s hand moved to Nathaniel’s hair and started stroking it. “Funny. I should be the one asking you if there’s anything wrong, though.”

Nathaniel stayed quiet. He had a vague feeling about what Jean wanted to talk about. After almost five years together, every minute of their days, it was hard not to.

“You seemed strange at practice, couldn’t do some simple defenses. Especially after you told us about that dream of yours.” He hadn’t finished yet but Nathaniel was already sighing against his neck. “No, listen to me. I know you, and I know when there’s something wrong with you. Don’t try to give me your ‘I’m fine’ excuse.”

“But,” Nathaniel raised his head so he could look Jean in the eyes properly. “I _am_ fine. It’s true—I am.”

“Nathaniel, you don’t need to hide yourself from me.”

 _Oh, dear, but I do_ , he wanted to say. _I do I do I do_. _Someday you’ll get sick and tired and someday you’ll run, and then what will be of me?_

Above then, the ball continued bouncing up and down against the walls. Nathaniel wished he was there, in the court, where all his worries and all his fears melted away with his sweat, where only exy.

“I swear, it was just a stupid dream,” Nathaniel said and shrugged his shoulders. “And I already told you at lunch. I was playing for the foxes, and I just—I don’t know, Jean.”

“You don’t know what?”

Nathaniel crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Most of times… When I dream, I only remember the bigger things. If I dream that my father never found my mother and I, I can remember that we're not home and that we’re running from something, but I always forget the smaller things—where we are, which language we're speaking, from who we're running from.” His eyes stayed fixed on his hands, with which he couldn't stop fidgeting with. “This time I remember everything. And the worst thing is that it doesn't feel like a dream. It feels like I'm remembering things I already know, or should've know. It's so strange. Disconcerting, even.”

How was he supposed to say he knew Dan liked to eat her cheerios every morning with just a bit of milk, or that Nicky favorite movies were all romcoms of the worst type? How could he tell him _I know that Andrew can eat a whole ice cream bucket by himself, and I know it's true because I dreamt it_.

Jean would think him crazy—and maybe he was. Maybe all the fucked up things in his life were finally taking a toll on him.

He dreamed as if he wanted to flee the world—but he didn’t. He didn't want to flee with his mother or go to the foxes. He wanted to stay.

Jean knew it. He came closer and took Nathaniel’s hands in his, without making any questions, without telling him anything disbelieving or discouraging. He traced the joints with his thumbs; the protruding bones, the small, hidden scars.

“I don't—I can't tell you that I know what you're talking about, or that I understand it. But I can tell you this: it was just a dream.” He raised Nathaniel's hands to his lips and kissed the back of them. “You are here. You are here with me, and Riko and Kevin are just above us. You're _home_ , Nathaniel.”

If Jean had said that three years ago, he would’ve cried. That day, Nathaniel just smiled at him, and Jean knew that what he said wasn't all Nathaniel needed to hear, but it was enough for now.

“I know.”

( _and above all, this_ , his heart said

 _this is your home_ )

They didn’t even notice that the sounds coming from the court had stopped a while ago, not until they heard a loud thump and a gasp. Then silence again.

Nathaniel raised his head with the look of a man who had seen that movie a thousand times before. “Do you think they’re fighting or fucking?”

“Fighting,” Jean answered, also looking to the ceiling as if it would show him what was happening above. “Riko’s been insufferable since we got into nationals and Kevin… Kevin’s being his usual self. I don’t know how they’ve gotten for so long without going for each other’s throats.”

Nathaniel tsked. “Silly. If there isn’t screaming, then they’re _absolutely_ fucking. Just listen.”

Quite unnecessarily, he put his finger over Jean’s mouth to shut him up, which almost made him not listen to the noise coming from above.

“Oh, God. Are they really going to fuck in the middle of the court?.”

“Come on, I don’t wanna stay here to hear the rest of it.” Nathaniel got up, pulling Jean with him—no matter that the ten inches Jean had on him always ended up unbalancing him when he did that. “Or maybe we should, you know, follow their example.”

Jean’s eyebrow shot up. “In here, with this horrid smell, when we have a nice bed awaiting us in our room? Sorry Nate, but I’ll pass.”

“Ugh,” Nathaniel groaned. “ _You_ are the insufferable one.”

Jean smoothed Nathaniel’s rough edges just to watch them grow anew, in a circle. In a way, he liked it more than he should—if he was to be trapped with someone, at least it should be Nathaniel. Without complaining, he let the redhead drag him by hand until they reached their room, just to be thrown in the bed as soon as the door as closed.

Jean kissed like a man who’s about to drown. Nathaniel never found out if he was the sailor pulling him up or the mermaid dragging him down.

 

* * *

 

(he went to sleep praying for a dreamless night, just this once. _hear me, please_. he asked the sky, hoping to find the god he never believed in. _please_.

when he woke up, he remembered why there was no god in his life but his father, and he was vengeful and merciless like death itself.)

 

* * *

 

The next day, he carefully avoided Jean without letting anyone notice. It was always like this: he would open up and then close down worse than before, trying to compensate for a supposed weakness with witty remarks and more time spent inside the court. He knew that it would be easy, to just keep talking and talking and telling Jean every single thing he’d hidden about himself, every bloody detail of the few ones he still managed to keep unknown. It would be easy to pretend that he could do that without consequences, without regrets.

Nothing a Wesninski does is without consequence. Nathaniel just never got used to the worst of them.

He was laying down on Riko and Kevin’s bedroom floor, feeling the breeze coming from the fan mess up his hair whenever it passed by him. He felt sleepy. Everything was quiet in the Nest—no loud music coming from somewhere, no desperate fighting or angry screaming. The only thing he could hear was the soft noise of Riko’s pencil scratching against his sketchbook from where he was drawing, sitting on the bed besides Nathaniel’s still form.

When Kevin was in the room, there was always some new rap or hip hop song blasting from his headphones, but he had left earlier with Jean to check on the new exy line Nike just released, and Riko by himself was prone to small murmurs and long periods of silence. And it would’ve stayed like this for a long time, if Nathaniel’s curiosity hadn’t gotten the best of him.

(if he hadn’t needed something to distract himself from what he decided to call _freshman anxiety_ )

Nathaniel sat, propped his elbows on the mattress and his chin on Riko’s thigh, trying to take a peek at what he was doing. “What are you drawing?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay,” He said, unfazed. Riko didn’t like to show his unfinished drawings because he was a fucking perfectionist and Nathaniel discovered that in the first week they met. “Can I see it, then?”

“You know you can’t.”

“Uh, I don’t. No problem in seeing it if it’s just a blank page.” Nathaniel shrugged. “Ain’t that right?”

Riko sighed, but he didn’t get his eyes up from the sketchbook. “What’s wrong with you today?”

Ah, there it was—that same accusation from yesterday, the exact thing Nathaniel had been running from, the reason he ditched Jean and Kevin’s invite to the store. It sat on his shoulder like a unmoving weight that sang _you can’t run and you can’t hide_.

Nathaniel lay down on the wood again and turned his face to the fan. “Nothing.”

He stayed like that for ten seconds, until something landed on his chest. A sketchbook. He quickly catched it before Riko could change his mind and examined the drawing. Straight nose, plump lips, curly hair. It wasn’t colored, but Nathaniel could already picture the skin painted dark.

“Oh,” he let out. “It’s Kevin.”

“Yes.” Riko quickly stretched his arm and snatched away the sketchbook from Nathaniel’s hands before he could have any other reaction. “Now you’ve seen it.”

Nathaniel climbed up the bed, pressing himself to Riko’s side. They were both touched starved things, but Riko would almost never initiate physical contact, while Nathaniel would do it in a heartbeat. “Any reason to be drawing him?”

“My teacher just discovered half the class only knows how to draw nudes of white looking boys, so she wants us to make things more ‘diverse’.” He examined the artwork, brought it close to his face, then held it away, before erasing a tiniest little mistake and lightly scratching over it. “I don’t even like drawing portraits.”

“Maybe if you decided to draw me you would like it. I’m sure your teacher also would.”

“Nathaniel.” Riko finally took his eyes away from his piece. “You’re white.”

“ _Fine_ ,” he huffed. “You can draw me _after_ you finish this.”

There was no answer, but Nathaniel didn’t need one to know he won the argument. He  was used to reaping the benefits of being the youngest and the most brilliant of them with such easiness that didn’t even think about it for long. Getting what he wanted was as natural as breathing—that was, of course, unless he wanted a way out. Or a nice family. Or a future where he wouldn’t have to conciliate being a professional exy player and a henchman. Or any of those stupid things kids dreamt of, outside of the Nest.

He didn’t dream of that. Not anymore.

“I’ll draw you after you tell me why you didn’t go to the store with Kevin and Jean,” Riko said—although Nathaniel could pick up from his voice that it was closer to an order to tell him what he wanted to know than a exchange in any way.

He tossed the sketchbook on Nathaniel’s lap and reclined against his pillow, closing his eyes and throwing his arm over them. Nathaniel opened the sketchbook in it’s first page and began examining all the pieces he hadn’t seen before. He didn’t want to talk—he came to Riko’s room because it was _silent_. If he wanted to talk, he would’ve gone to the damned store.

“Just didn’t feel like having a conversation, you know?” He said, letting the sarcasm flow freely. Not that it would bother Riko. Jean, maybe. But not Riko.

Nathaniel kept flipping through the pages. Most of the drawings were studies and sketches for Riko’s classes—people and backgrounds and animals. Lots of ravens, because Riko always like drawing birds, and drawing ravens felt, in a sense, like drawing himself and the others, since that's what they were: ravens first, humans second.

Birds of ill omen.

“If you didn't, you would've stayed in your room, alone.” There was no answer for that. Nathaniel moved Riko’s arm away from his face and put the notebook on his eye level, pointing to a somewhat new drawing.

“What's this?” Nathaniel asked.

“It's from the Bible. Cain and Abel.” Riko pointed to the two men in the page. One was lying on the dirt, dead, while the other kneeled next to him, with a raven perched on his bloody hand. “Do you know it?”

Nathaniel shook his head.

“They were brothers—Cain was the oldest and Abel the youngest. They had I fight, I guess, or some other thing, and then Cain took Abel somewhere and killed him. It was humanity’s first death, if you believe in the Bible.” Nathaniel had never even a slight interest on religion, but the image left a strange taste in mouth.

Nathaniel’s eyebrow raised almost comically. “Since when you know things about the Bible, anyway? I’m surprised.”

“Kayleigh used to take us to mass, at Sundays.” Sometimes Nathaniel forgot that Riko actually knew Kevin’s mother before she died, that he talked about her as if she was almost a motherly figure to him; or at least, as if she tried to be one. “Just Kevin, her, and I. And I can’t say that we didn’t spend most of the time whispering childish things to each other while she constantly _shushed_ us. But I remember some important things about it. Or at least, things _she_ thought were important.”  

“And the raven?” he asked, avid to bring Riko’s attention somewhere else — talking about his family or anything close enough only left him nearly unrecognizable with rage or in a state of complete apathy — and noticing how both the bird and Cain were looking to the dead man.

“It teached Cain how to bury the body.”

“Uh, so… The raven was bad.”

Riko frowned. “All depictions of ravens are bad. No one likes a bird that eats dead meat.”

“And yet,” Nathaniel mused. “The team's named after them. You think whoever did it knew what would happen in this place?”

In the East Tower, to be more precise. Did they knew how many people would find their deaths there? How many lost souls?

Riko didn't answer that. Being the estranged son of a mafia boss who used his games to schedule secret meetings, Nathaniel’s question left a bitter taste in his tongue. “Did you and Jean fight?”

 _What the fuck,_ Nathaniel wanted to say, but it would make it all too obvious. Instead, he settled for a slightly aghast “No. Why do you think that?”

“You've been avoiding him.” Riko answered, like all Nathaniel’s efforts to be discreet hadn't happened at all.

Nathaniel sighed. He really should've stayed in his room. No wonder why they called him stupid so many times a day.

(and beautiful and precious and good and brilliant and thousands of other things, too)

“We didn't fight, we just…” It was difficult for him to put into words what happened the day before without sounding like a fragile, scared little thing. “I was… confused. He tried to help me and I ended up talking too much. Now I'm ashamed about the whole thing.”

Riko opened his mouth but quickly closed it without saying anything. He didn’t seem convinced, but he didn’t ask Nathaniel for more, didn’t _demand_ for more, as he would before. It was clear as day he wasn’t satisfied with the pitiful answer Nathaniel had given him, but he only took a deep breath and nodded.

Maybe the therapy was finally becoming useful.

Internally, Nathaniel debated whether he should or not tell Riko more about his dream. He’d told Jean, so it would only make sense that he would tell the rest of them. Still, telling Jean something and then telling Riko and Kevin this same something were diametrically opposed. Jean cared for him, which was not to say that Riko and Kevin didn’t. It was just that they cared more for _them_ , as a whole four-person symbiotic creature. For them as a team. For them as their future.

He would have to tell everyone, sooner or later. No secret could live for long between them.

“Looks like you want to say something,” Nathaniel said. That’s what he liked to do: take a stick, poke the snake, fake surprise when it lunges at you.

Riko scoffed. “You're the one hiding things here.”

 _See?_ Nathaniel thought, pretending he was making a presentation for an audience at his back. _It bites_.

“I'm not hiding anything from you. I never did.” He answered, but it was a weak answer. A lying one. Riko’s eyes seemed to speak for him. _You are_ , they said. _You did_.

Nathaniel wondered how bad Riko could take a weird feeling about a dream. Pretty bad seemed to cover it well, but even pretty bad was better than this.

(they tell each other everything and they fight because of it and they hate each other because of it, but they don't hide, not there, not between them

not when the rest of their lives is a constant game of hide and seek, not when uncles and fathers and the press were always breathing too close to their necks)

Nathaniel sighed.

“It’s about that dream I told y’all yesterday at lunch.” He didn’t ask if Riko remembered it; of course he would. “It wasn’t just a dream—I mean, I know it was, because it can’t be something else, but it doesn’t felt like it. I don’t know how to explain.”

Riko tapped the pencil against his thigh rhythmically, likely not to scream with impatience. “Just say how it felt, then. Not how it was supposed to.”

He tried to begin a few times before deciding from where to. “You remember I told I was a fox, right, in the dream? But it wasn't just in the dream. After I woke up, I looked at Jean and it was like… Like I didn't know what he was doing there, by my side. Like he wasn't supposed to be close to me. I spent _hours_ feeling like that, like I was trapped inside a dream when I was, in fact, very awake.” Nathaniel couldn't find words to properly describe the moment when he felt himself as if waking underwater, his surroundings blurry and bright and unreal. All morning he drowned and breathed and drowned again. “It felt like I wasn't supposed to be here.”

Riko slid down by the bed until he and Nathaniel were eye-level. “You are. You know it, Nathaniel.”

“Yes, I do. I know it. But it just—it felt wrong, somehow.”

“You are a Raven,” he said, touching the tip of his finger to Nathaniel’s chest. “Not a fox.”

(this is your home)

Nathaniel nodded and bent his body halfway into fetal position, hugging his knees. He felt a sudden need to just slot himself against the spaces in Riko’s body and stay there until Kevin and Jean came home and put everything back where it should be, but he didn't think the other side would appreciate.

It was not that Riko didn't want the same as him, like two bird hatchlings screaming for the caress of their mother, dreaming of a hand on their shoulders, their knees, their thighs. It was that Nathaniel learned how to get what he wanted, while Riko liked to pretend he simply didn't want anything at all.

“I know. That’s why I felt so off afterwards, I guess.” He scratched the tip of his nose and looked down. “I just don’t want you thinking that it’s somehow related to what I want. Because the only thing I want is this.” And he gestured around in a circle, meaning them. Meaning the Ravens, Evermore Castle, this life.

_I don't want to know how Matt can be whenever he's watching his trash comedy series, don't want to know how Nicky’s “secret family recipe” always ends up tasting slightly burned. I don't want to know how Andrew smells at morning, when we just woke up, bodies plastered to each other. I don't want Andrew._

_Do I want Andrew?_

_(who is andrew? you don't know him. you're a raven and you never talked to him, never saw him, don't know him)_

_I don't want him I don't want him idont wanthim_

Riko closed his eyes and breathed deeply, lost in thought. If Nathaniel didn't know him so well, he might wonder if Riko didn't fell asleep instead, with how awfully quiet he would become in moments like these.

(maybe he's sleeping, maybe he's dead)

“I'm sorry,” Nathaniel said, his voice small like he was still a child of ten, living under his father's heel and axe.

“If it was just a dream, then you shouldn’t be.” Riko looked at him like he knew all the secrets hidden inside Nathaniel’s head—sometimes Nathaniel thought that he truly knew them, or else how would Riko protect them from the things they never tell him about? “If it was just a dream, then it’s not your fault. And even if it wasn’t just a dream. As long as you stay.”

Nathaniel intertwined their legs to show Riko that yes, he was there and yes, he was going to stay. He never thought of anything else. “I’m not leaving.”

The finger touching his chest was replaced by a hand splayed atop his sternum, so he could hear the constant _thump_ of his heart. “Then you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Nathaniel wanted to ask _are you sure?_ but he didn’t. Not when he remembered how scared he would get whenever his father came to visit Evermore, to teach Riko how to throw knives or how to gut a man without dirtying himself too much, and how he would hid himself in every corner imaginable, behind his wardrobe or under the bed, until Riko came to collect him, spotless clean and smelling like lavender — as if he wasn’t covered head to toe in blood few moments before —, how Nathaniel latched into his hand every time it was offered.

 _You’ve got nothing to worry about_ , he would say. _I won’t let him touch you. I won’t let anyone touch you, understand?_

 _I do_ , little Nathaniel would say, so many times he started believing it, so many times he let himself see Riko as the only barrier between him and his father’s cleave. _I do_.

Nathaniel closed his eyes and let himself relax. He still believed. In the silence, he paid attention to the quiet sounds of Riko’s breathing, and forgot about foxes and butchers alike.

“Hey. Riko,” he whispered, a minute or ten later. He knew Riko wasn’t sleeping, even if his face looked like it. It took much more time for him to win the daily fight against insomnia. “Can you teach me how to draw?”

Riko opened his eyes, blinked once, twice, and almost smiled. “I’ve tried to teach you for two years and you’ve never evolved past stickmen.”

“They were stickmen in very complex positions. And anyway, I’m older now. Better. Come on,” He quickly grabbed Riko’s hand and kissed the back of it, before it was snatched away from his reach. “I promise you I won’t give up in the middle.”

Riko scratched his head and Nathaniel knew he was thinking of all the times that promise had been made and still Nathaniel gave up in the middle of the lesson. “Fine.”

“Wait, really? I thought you’d given up on me for real. Are you okay?” He narrowed his eyes while searching for the sketchbook. “Did you took your medicine this morning?”

“The fact that I took my medicine is the only thing preventing me from hitting you right now.” Riko found the sketchbook and threw it in the direction of Nathaniel’s head. “Now open up on the last page so I can rip it out later. Don’t want my sketchbook filled with stickmen.”

“As if you would ever hit me,” Nathaniel said, but did what he was told.

Riko pretended he didn’t hear that. “Do you still remember guidelines?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re hopeless.”

Nathaniel threw his head back and laughed. Half an hour later, he had given up on the lesson, not being able to do anything Riko asked him to, and began his third drawing of a stickman—two of them this time, with racquets in their hands and odd numbers tattooed on their cheeks.

 

* * *

 

The first night he didn’t dream with the foxes — didn’t dream with anything at all — Nathaniel took it with a grain of salt. Surely his mind was tricking him again, pretending it would all be fine from then on, that the dreams were gone along with his doubts and his fears.

But then he didn’t dream of the second night, neither on the third or the fourth. _A blessing_ , he thought, although a blessing must come from someone, and Nathaniel couldn’t think of anyone; refused to. Still, a blessing. For the first time in a week, he could lay down next to Jean in his — their — bed and not feel Jean’s heavy stare upon him, his _are you okay?_ said without a sound.

The game against the foxes was almost upon them. In less than a day they would be in the road to South Carolina to step feet in the Foxhole Court and guarantee that the foxes’ first journey to the national championship would be as short as anybody who knew even a little bit about exy predicted it would. He was practicing more than anyone else in the team, throwing everything he had in his first chance to show the whole country what he was capable of; why Riko chose him. He wanted to show them there was a reason why the number three was tattooed on his face not later than when he was still a child of fourteen.

Jean was a heavy sleeper, so it wasn't hard to slip away from bed every night and give exy another two hours of his day— when you can say too much to something that already has every thing of you?

Nathaniel watched enough clips of the foxes’ previous games — and dreamed enough about them — to know that their biggest asset was their goalkeeper, but he was as unpredictable inside the walls of the court as Riko was outside of them. Some games, he managed to deflect even the most impossible shots. In others, he couldn't be bothered to move more than a feet in both directions.

 _Andrew_. The name brought back a string of images and sensations on his mind. His fingers buried in blond threads, lips that should feel strange — but didn’t — marking his neck, a pair of hands firmly holding him by the hips. Nathaniel shook his head as if that could make the memories go away.

(how can they be memories if he never lived them?)

The sound of the court’s door closing brought him back to reality. He was supposed to be alone. In fact, he was supposed to be on his bed, soundly asleep, getting himself charged up for the match. Could it be that the master saw him tiptoeing around the hallways? He wouldn't get a beating when there weren't even 24 hours to the next game, right? Right?

“If you're going to throw shots like a five year old, you better get back to bed.”

Nathaniel let out the breath he was holding. Of course the master wouldn't bother with following him around. He turned around, racket turned to the ground, to find Kevin watching him. In the dark, there was no way of seeing his expression, but Nathaniel could bet his arm on that displeased curve of his lips they all knew so well.

“And what are you doing here, anyway? I thought you were too good for midnight practices.”

“I never said that.”

 _Right_ , Neil thought. _You’d practice at three in the morning if someone invited you to._

“Give me a break, Kevin.” He said, lining up for another shot. “It's, like, one in the morning. I have a right to be a little tired.”

“A _little tired_ isn't going to help us win the game, and you know it.” As Kevin started walking in his direction, Nathaniel’s eyes recognized the distinct shape of a racket loosely held in his left hand. “If you wanna spend the time you have to get rested practicing, at least do it right.”

Nathaniel scoffed. “Yeah, as if. Why aren't you in bed, anyway?”

“Got up to take a piss and heard you sneaking, if you wanna know. You?”

“What, can't you see?” He opened his arms as if he were presenting a hidden achievement. “I'm _practicing_.”

The foxed might be their weakest adversary, but they were still their adversary, and Nathaniel remembered enough of being a young boy who couldn't bother with teams he considered _below his level_. And he remembered enough of Kevin drilling into his head the notion that no matter how weak you though the other team was, they could always get their shit together in a game like a miracle, if they wanted to. Most team's problem was that people just didn't care enough to want that.

But then, most teams weren't Edgar Allen’s, and most people weren't ravens.

Kevin threaded his fingers in the racket’s net and pulled three times before picking up a ball from the floor. Always testing things, double checking, being sure. Kevin liked to call it being cautious, even if they all knew he did it because he was a anxious wreck.

“You don't fool me. You didn't even bothered with your equipment. And I can't believe someone that tells me they're practicing in _pajamas_.”

“It's Jean's old jersey, so I think it should count as uniform and, therefore, equipment.”

Kevin sighed. “You know what, I can leave you alone, if you want to.” He bounced the ball on the floor once, twice, and effortlessly scored in the right corner of the goal. _Always look for the corners_ , the Master said to them. By the time the goalkeeper stretched his body enough to reach the ball, it should already be past him. “Or, if you don’t wanna deal with whatever’s keeping you awake at this time, you could at least learn how to score."

Nathaniel wanted to tell him _no, thanks_ , wanted to say _that was nothing impressive, you know_ or _I’ve know how to fucking score since I was seven_. But worse than enduring Kevin’s arrogance was being alone in the court at midnight, with his nerves grating themselves raw thinking about the match. “Fine,” he said, not even looking at Kevin, like _he_ was the one doing the favor by letting Kevin stay there. “Stay here, if you want. I don’t care.”

Kevin didn’t say anything else—Nathaniel supposed he was already used to remarks like that one. After all, it wasn’t like they were exactly gentle with each other. Both him and Kevin were self-absorbed perfectionists with an uncanny obsession with exy and winning. There was no way of being nice with each other when half of their relationship was about who was the best of them.

(nathaniel wasn’t stupid enough not to see it was kevin. at least for now)

They practiced for about thirty minutes. When Nathaniel got tired of taking shots—or, in Kevin’s version: when he deigned Nathaniel’s shots good enough—Kevin acted as the opponent backliner, so that Neil had to get past him and then take the shot, which was hard enough when Kevin’s arm seemed to have half of Nathaniel’s size, and he wasn’t even taking the racquet in consideration. When Nathaniel’s feet started giving up under him, Kevin took the racquet away from his hands.

“Okay, that’s enough.” Nathaniel tried to get his racquet back but he didn’t have the strength to jump. Damn Kevin’s parents for making him the size of a small mountain.

“Give it back.”

“No way,” Kevin said, constantly keeping the racquet away from Nathaniel’s reach. Damn his parents for making him the size of a midget. “I’m not watching you faint from pure stubbornness.”

“Kevin, I’m serious.” Nathaniel used all his remaining strength to keep standing, but he still managed to sound threatening. His father would be proud. “Give me the racquet back _now_.”

Kevin, bless him, lowered his arm enough that the butt of the racquet touched the floor. Nathaniel extended his arm, but Kevin didn’t move again. Instead, he opened his mouth and said:

“Then come and get it.”

The thing is: Nathaniel knew how to fight. He was raised to kill, to be Riko’s butcher, to protect them all if anything were to happen, like that day in the East Tower, so many years before. He knew the places where he could sink a knife into someone’s flesh with minimal resistance; he knew where he should cut if he didn’t want that someone to walk anymore; knew how to not spill blood when he should and how to spill _a lot_ of blood when he felt like it. The knife itself wasn’t a necessity—he knew very well what type of damage he could do with his hands alone.

When Nathaniel lunged at Kevin, it wasn’t anything like his classes. His feet felt like two blocks of concrete holding him down. He was tired—he was _so_ tired; between the normal practices (which wouldn’t be considered normal anywhere but in the Nest), the nightly ones and the lack of sleep, it was a wonder how he could still lift his arm. Kevin maneuvered around him like he would do against a child, all the while keeping the racquet so out of Nathaniel’s reach he couldn’t even dream of grasping it. And Kevin knew that Nathaniel was too tired to put up a fight. But he forgot he still had enough energy to do one or two dirty tricks.

Before he could defend himself, Nathaniel turned his back to him and sent his elbow with all the force he could muster right into Kevin's solar plexus. He snatched the racquet away before it touched to ground, and took three steps back while Kevin was on his knees, painting and cursing him under his breath.

“What the fuck, Nate.” He touched the area where he’d been hit with the tips of his fingers and still flinched. “You could've asked it nicely.”

“I did that.”

“Whatever. _Fuck_ , this hurts.”

The racquet fell to the floor with a loud _clack_. Nathaniel slowly lay down on his back besides Kevin, secretly proud with himself for not letting his body hit the wood like a sack of flour. Even the little movements took a toll on him as if he had run a marathon the hour before. Every breath got in and out of his chest like a knife, burning his muscles from within, liquid lead.

He circled his arms around his own waist like hugging himself could make up for the lack another person’s touch. “Kevin?”

“What?” Kevin croaked.

“What if we lose?”

Nathaniel’s eyes were closed, but he could hear Kevin laying down on the floor, face turned to him. “So that’s what you’re scared of?”

He nodded. Moving his mouth hurt too—but not more than leaving that unsaid any minute longer.

“Nate, look at me. Open your eyes.” Nathaniel obeyed. In the dark, Kevin was a tall silhouette almost touching him. Nathaniel moved closer. “We are not going to lose.”

Kevin, who never underestimates an opponent. Nathaniel would call him a liar if he didn’t knew that was being said for his own peace of mind. “You don’t know that.”

Kevin sighed. “You know what, I really don’t.” He let his hand rest against Nathaniel’s chest, not caring about the heat and the sweat. “But I know that none of their backliners is strong enough to stop Riko and I, and that none of their strikers are fast enough to get past Jean. And I know that you’ve been training for this your whole life. Now it’s your turn to believe in yourself.”

It was supposed to be easy for him. As a Raven, he should never doubt his team. As a member of the perfect court, he should never doubt his partners. And as Nathaniel, #3, starting backliner, he should never doubt himself. And he almost never did, until that day.

Or until some nights before that fucking dream—although by then Nathaniel thought of it as a nightmare, sometimes.

“The rational part of my brain knows that,” he whispered. “But there’s just— I don’t know. Maybe I’m just nervous, or maybe it’s a bad feeling about it, but I can’t… I can’t feel that surety you all have.”

Kevin grunted as he got himself on his feet again and Nathaniel promised himself to saying sorry to him as soon as the feelings of being small and weak vanished. Probably after the game—after their win. Everything should be back to normal by then; he should be back at feeling like that exy was the only thing in the world that deserved his undivided attention, and that no one could be better at it than the four of them.

Yes, it was Riko who coined the name _perfect court_ for them, but it wasn’t long before anyone referred to them as that. They knew it—the media, the fans, the opponents, even the master, sitting on his high chair, cane dangling above their backs. They all knew it.

Nathaniel raised his arm, and just a second later, as if he could see it, Kevin grabbed his hand and pulled him up, steading him when Nathaniel lost his footing. They started the short way back to their rooms — Jean swore the master would like to have their doors right in front of the court, if it was possible — with Kevin’s arm around Nathaniel’s waist, steading him as they slowly walked, as if they wouldn’t get a scolding and maybe a beating if anyone saw them. Or maybe the master wouldn’t be so mad as to beat them the morning before a match. Maybe.

The soft sound of their foots tapping against the floor made him sleepy. Nathaniel rested his head against Kevin’s shoulder, silently blessing his height — not that he would ever tell Kevin he wanted to be tall as him — for making him the perfect partner when he wanted to snuggle. Jean was just too tall for that, and Nathaniel sometimes felt like a child just by standing close to him. Riko was almost his size, and it was very difficult to find out whenever he wanted to hug or just be hugged, since his face was always saying _don’t you dare touching me_.

“You better take a bath ‘cause if you slip on Riko’s bed all sweaty he's gonna murder you _twice._ ” The words came out from his mouth all slurred, but it didn't matter to Kevin, who could make sense of them easily. It was not the first time he dragged an exhaust Nathaniel to his bed.

“ _You_ better take a bath, unless you wanna Jean to wake up with your smell.”

“Jean? Wake up? Oh, Kevin, you flatter him.”

They stopped of Nathaniel and Jean’s door, the first room of the black hallway. Kevin already had his hand on the doorknob when Nathaniel stopped him.

“You were in it too,” he said, half awake and half asleep, as if he was telling a secret even from himself.

“I was in what?”

Nathaniel’s voice was the whisper of a conspirator. “In the dream. You were a fox too, Kev.”

Without a word, Kevin opened the door and helped Nathaniel to lay down without making much noise. On the other side, Jean snored like an old car in winter, blissfully unaware.

He let his lips hover close to Nathaniel’s ear and whispered “I know.”

After all, it was Kevin the first birdling to leave the nest.

Nathaniel nodded and closed his eyes. He heard Kevin close the door, and then his soft footsteps as he walked to the opposite hallway. Two foxes quietly hid inside the raven's nest. Riko would want their heads, if he knew. Or maybe he would just want them back. It was difficult to say, with him. To be honest, it was difficult to say with anyone of them.

He wished for sleep, even if not dreamless. He had a team to defeat, a team who was not his, nor matter how much nitid images his brain could come up with. He was a raven, not a fox. Black and red and evil—the butcher's son. Nathaniel was a ill omen by itself.

He hoped they were prepared for him. He hoped _Andrew_ was prepared for him. It was his first national game, and Nathaniel Wesninski would not start his career by losing.

He would show them the feathers he was made of. The foxes just happened to be their — his — unlucky opponent.

(Nathaniel remembered scenes that never happened, saw Andrew sprawled in a bean bag with Nathaniel’s — ? — feet on his lap, zapping through a hundred channels while Kevin whined that the game had already begun and could Andrew just _please_ change to the sports channel?)

_unlucky indeed_

 

* * *

 

 _Is this how a earthquake feels?_ Nathaniel wondered, feeling the vibrations that descended from the seats above him, seeping into the floor and crawling through his body like an electric current. The bleachers were full of bodies dressed in black and red, even though they were in fox territory—like chickens on a hen house, waiting to be eaten.

But they were not chicken. And that night, Nathaniel knew, it was the foxes that were going to be eaten.

The announcers called each one of them by their jersey number, foxes first and ravens after. That left him, Nathaniel Wesninski, backliner, #3 (all the things he were and all the things he could not forget) positioned right in front of the foxes’ #3.

Andrew Minyard, goalkeeper.

In his dreams, he seemed taller. Or maybe that was because Andrew had _felt_ bigger, stronger somehow, putting himself between Nathaniel — Nathaniel? Neil — and his father’s cleaver. To Neil, he was like a savior, like christ the redeemer opening his arms to let Neil hide inside them. He was taller than his mother, his father and all his fears piled on top of each other.

But in that moment, while people thumped their feet in rhythm with the raven’s fight song, he look as short as his height — _a goalkeeper at fucking five feet tall,_ Jean had laughed — and not so much the brave knight in shining armor Neil fancied him to be. To be honest, none of the foxes had that same sparkle they did in the dream. Maybe Neil had imagined it — it was a dream, of _course_ he’d imagined it —, had let his defenses be teared down, his walls to tumble soundlessly to the ground.

Looking at their eyes thought their visors, the foxes looked just as they should: his opponents. The people he was — that they were — going to tear down. Flanked by Kevin on his right and Jean on his left, Nathaniel — because that was his name, _Nathaniel_ , and if he couldn’t forget it when he wanted to, he surely wouldn’t do it now — felt more as a raven than anything else he could be.

Minyard — not Andrew, because Nathaniel didn’t knew anyone called that — looked at him as if he was bored out of his mind just by being in the court. Nathaniel could not understand that. His blood burned inside his veins, his feet itched and his hands closed tight around his racquet, thrumming with the need to move. To _win_. Luckily for him, losing wasn’t something people usually linked to Edgar Allen’s Ravens. And if he could help it, it never would. The stone on the fox’s tomb was already set, and it had his fingerprints on it, shinin.

Nathaniel smiled at Minyard, opened his wings, and flew.

**Author's Note:**

> i will repeat: riko is a fucking rich boy and therefore has NO REASON not to do some FUCKING therapy. yall think i was going to lose the opportunity to give him a shot at a mental health treatment? i dont think so  
> oh and by the time i remembered that riko should actually be majoring in history along with kevin i already had written everything concerning that and no money in the world could make me write it all over again


End file.
